Word: sisavang
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Tranquil Buddha. In a modest white palace overlooking the mile-wide Mekong sits worried 67-year-old King Sisavang Vong, afflicted with gout, but refusing all urgings that he leave his capital. Like his Thai people, the King is a fatalist. In the temples his people lay offerings and burn incense before tranquil, smiling images of Buddha, confident that whatever comes, it will inevitably change, as the mystic circle of life completes itself. It is exactly 500 years since Luang Prabang was last invaded...
...Sisavang Vong, on the great Mekong River. With the leading Communist column only 35 miles distant, a Communist-rebel underground proclaimed itself the "sole legal government" of Laos, named a Laotian rebel, Souphanou Vong, as President...
...several hundred thousand French Union and Vietnamese troops bottled up in the Red River delta and in the airstrip at Nasan, Giap began probing the defenses of Laos with his Viet Minh commandos. In his exquisite white palace overlooking the palm-fringed Mekong River, aging (67), crew-cropped King Sisavang Vong told the French: "This is my country; this is my palace; I am too old to tremble before danger." Not until three of Giap's crack divisions appeared at Laos' borders last week did King Sisavang Vong call on his happy-go-lucky Laotians to mobilize...
...hole flute called the Ken. It is said that French officers, after a tour of duty in Laos, remain forever afterward vaguely inattentive and quietly dissolute in manner. But last week the French had put aside love and proverbs for a hard look at Laos' defenses: under King Sisavang Vong's banner (a field of red with three white elephants under a white parasol), Laos could muster only 10,000 trained & tried soldiers and 13,000 armed but untried men, all with French officers...
...battle shaped up, King Sisavang Vong appealed to the U.N. to recognize the invasion of Laos as an act of external aggression, rather than as another phase of the Indo-China war, as the French prefer to regard it. His aim: to head off establishment by Giap of a Communist "Free Laotian Government" headed by Prince Souphranouvong, a distant relative. Meanwhile, the old King complained of rheumatism, and thought he might pay a visit to Paris. It would be a long time before the water was high enough for the fish to eat the ants...